Parenting a toddler

I always feel a sense of irony looking back at my ignorance of parenting before actually having to do it.

The ignorance and arrogance of youth who think they know it all. I am sure 99% of people reading this with kids think this too, as we all sit on a sofa covered in baby snot and chocolate handprints.

But in fairness, I had good reason to be cocky. I grew up in a large extended family (I have 30 cousins!), surrounded by babies. Before I was pregnant, loads of my friends had kids, my sister has kids, cousins had kids etc. You get the idea. I was relatively late at reproducing. And I thought I knew what to expect and that I was able to deal with any eventuality.

Looking back at when my little bundle of joy arrived, the first few months are hard to recall due to a heavy mix of sleep deprivation and anxiety. But on reflection, the first two years of parenting were relatively straight forward: make sure the baby was physically looked after, remember to feed, change, & sleep. Yes I felt tired, but the milestones of “has he put weight on”, “is he sitting up”…were all objective to measure and assured me that I was “doing it right”.

Easy. Bobs your uncle. You are parent of the year for keeping all limbs attached.  

But what I wasn’t prepared for was the toddler/tantrum phase. Obviously, I had been exposed to toddlers prior to owning my own delightful one. But there is something so different about being able to dip in and out of a kid’s life with absolutely no responsibility for discipline or teaching. During this idyllic time, I had no understanding of a child’s ingenious ability to go from charming and polite in front of others to utterly feral in the confines of their own home.

Now we are at the three and a half year point in the monster’s life journey. It feels like we have now reached a black hole of parenting. Now we are on to actually growing a person; developing his sense of self and his place in the world. Now we are teaching him the difference between right and wrong, beginning to nurture his kindness and caring for others. I don’t know why but this fills me with more dread than the new born bit.

What if he turns out to be a bit of a dick – it’s all my (or mainly the man’s ;)) fault! If he becomes an adult that I don’t like, is that just how he was always going to be or is that because of my parenting?

My beautiful little sunbeam has recently started testing his boundaries. Again, looking back at my pregnancy days, myself and the man would go walking and discuss parenting. We knew we were going to be amazing parents (obvs.). We were in agreement on the things that we could foresee – e.g. limiting access to tablets, no xbox before 10…blah blah blah #perfectparents #winning. When it came to disciplining, we were also in agreement, take things away; make use of the naughty step; discuss with the child what happened….

Oh yes my friend, we had watched supernanny and believed we could do a better job.

Fast forward to now and I see that this disciplining malarkey is a lot more complicated than we had anticipated. And it’s not the big wobbles, because those are easy to deal with – they are clearly and most definitely “naughty” and involve direct intervention/consequences.

(incidentally, I have found that my “mum” voice is a lot like my mums voice and strikes fear in to my kids face immediately. I don’t even know what I would do if I actually reached 3 in the count).

It’s the days where there is a culmination of small misdemeanours that I find difficult to navigate; the continual “can I have/I want” and repeating the question when they don’t get the answer they want a little bit louder and a bit more aggressive, the not sitting where you tell them to, the putting 4 toys in the bag when you clearly say 1, where leaving the house requires the skills of a UN peace talk expert. I don’t understand if all of these actions are supposed to result in the naughty step because technically, he isn’t doing what he is told. But for the love of god I’d be stood by that step forever! It gets so tiring. The feeling that I am constantly nagging and saying “No” and “listen!”. I have never felt so useless and so frustrated in my life.

To all parents of toddlers. In 50 years time, let’s reconvene and discuss whether or not our children have turned out to be dicks and how much we believe it is down to our parenting.

It’s a date.

Mum, PhD.